We can’t be ambiguous about torture

Writing in the Chicago Sun Times, Andrew Greely says he is “ashamed for America because all the evil done in the nation's name in recent years is turning off the light on the mountaintop”. He says that his “government kidnaps, tortures and murders the way the Gestapo did in Nazi Germany. The President (Bush) blithely dismisses these charges. The United States, he says, does not torture but that deception is based on an opinion from (former) Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defining torture”.

Michael B. Mukasey has been nominated by the Whitehouse to replace Gonzales as Attorney General. On October 18th, he told Senate Democrats that “water boarding” a simulated drowning technique used in interrogation was repugnant to him but he doesn’t know whether the interrogation tactic violates U.S. laws against torture.
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n a four-page letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, Mukasey straddled the fence again by outlining the laws and treaties forbidding torture and other cruel treatment, and explaining the legal analysis he would undertake of "coercive" techniques, while generally declining to render judgments. He continued, "hypotheticals are different from real life, and in any legal opinion the actual facts and circumstances are critical." In my personal view, torture is torture. There is nothing hypothetical about it.

Mukasey says he is reluctant to offer opinions on interrogation techniques because he does not want to place U.S. officials "in personal legal jeopardy" and is concerned that such remarks might "provide our enemies with a window into the limits or contours of any interrogation program."

His arguments are similar to those advanced by the Bush Administration in its refusal to discuss water boarding or other interrogation techniques. If Mukasey were to say the tactic is illegal, he would effectively deem earlier Justice Department opinions unlawful. That would be a good thing.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), the Democrats’ front-running candidate for president, says that "we cannot send a signal to the world that (our) next Attorney General in any way condones torture or believes that the President is unconstrained by law." Senator Barack Obama (Ill.) another presidential candidate and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), a member of the Judiciary panel, issued similar statements.

Canada’s hands are not clean when it comes to torture. On April 23, the Globe and Mail wrote that the majority of prisoners captured by the Canadians in Afghanistan were tortured by local authorities. That revelation unleashed a huge controversy. The Harper Government reacted by signing a non-torture agreement with Afghan President, Hamid Karzai. Since then, Ottawa has insisted that torture is gone from Afghanistan.

Michele Ouimet writing in Montreal’s La Presse this week reports that he recently visited Kandahar's Sarpoza prison in Afghanistan. Three prisoners captured in recent months told him they had been tortured. One of the prison's senior officials, who was present during the prisoner interviews, confirmed the tortures: he said, "detainees are tortured by the Secret Service before they're brought to us at Sarpoza."

That leads me to the Maher Arar story. He is a Canadian citizen who was born in Syria. He came to Canada in 1987 where he earned a Bachelor's degree and a Master's degree in computer engineering before going to work as a telecommunications engineer in Ottawa.

On September 26, 2002, Arar was detained by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization officials at New York's JFK Airport while returning to Montreal from a family vacation in Tunisia. A citizen of both Canada and Syria, he was carrying a Canadian passport. American officials alleged that he had links to al-Qaeda. On or about October 7, 2002, Arar was taken on a private jet, by U.S. officials to Yemen where he was handed off to people who transported him to the Syrian border.

Arar was lodged in a Syrian prison for more than a year. When he was returned to Canada, he said he had been tortured and accused American officials of sending him to Syria knowing that torture is practiced in that country. The RCMP was accused of supplying the information that caused U.S. officials to detain Arar.

In January, 2004, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs appointed Justice Dennis O'Connor to head an inquiry into the matter. A report released at the inquiry confirmed the RCMP was in contact with U.S. authorities from the time of Arar's arrest in New York to his deportation to Syria. The U.S. State Department refused to co-operate in any way with the Arar inquiry.

On September 18, 2006, Justice O'Connor in his first of two reports said there was no evidence that Arar was ever linked to extremist groups or was a threat to Canada's national security. He had nothing but sharp criticism for the RCMP. He concluded that the FBI and U.S. security officials were given an inaccurate and unfair picture of Arar and that this portrait dogged his entire time in a Syrian jail.

On January 26, 2007, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology to Arar, announcing he would receive $12.5 million in compensation, $10.5 million for pain and suffering and another $2 million for Arar's legal fees. Maher Arar remains on the U.S. watch list.

The 1949 Geneva Convention, once a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy, in Part III, Section I, Article 17 concerning the treatment of prisoners of war says “No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind”.

That should be the standard by which appointment of the United States’ Attorney General is measured. It should also be the standard for Canada’s law enforcement agencies and the involvement of Canada’s armed forces - directly and indirectly.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at mailto:bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com